Wind, not cold, could disrupt SB

The one thing that could truly mess up the competitive integrity of Super Bowl XLVIII four years hence is not cold or rain or snow. It's wind.

For example: The NFC Championship game at Giants Stadium in 1987, which was a great moment for Giants fans but not much of a game because of the weather.

Here is Redskins coach Joe Gibbs talking about it with Sirius XM's Gary Williams:

"That memory I want to get rid of! That was a nightmare. I think what we’ve got to pray for is for the Super Bowl day, the day of the game, you gotta have decent weather. You can have some nightmare situations in New York, that far north, particularly that time of the year.

"That game? That thing was, I think we had a chance to get one pass downfield and we missed that one, and that was it. Wrap it up. I mean, you’re not going anywhere. And it is going to be a tough, tough situation if something like that comes up in New York.”

Then there was the windy, frigid 1962 NFL Championship game at Yankee Stadium, recalled as a miserable experience by most who were there.

Marv Albert, who was working as a spotter for Marty Glickman, told me he couldn't wait to get out of there. Vinny DiTrani of the Bergen Record, who has been covering the Giants for 35 years and was at the game as a fan that day, told me Wednesday that he never has been so cold, before or since, and thought his face was going to fall off.

The Packers won, 16-7. The Giants' only touchdown came when they recovered a blocked punt in the Green Bay end zone.

Speaking of the weather for the 2014 Super Bowl, it was  stretch by our friends at The Times to follow up the big announcement with this story about the 1995 Giants-Chargers Snowball Game - on page A1, no less.

For one thing, there have been a number of snowy situations at Meadowlands football games since then, and nothing close to a repeat of what happened in '95. (Yes, I was there!)

For another, that was a stadium full of non-regulars on the final day of an awful season.

That won't be anything close to the case when the Super Bowl comes to the Meadowlands.